Toll Booth
by Ari-Skye
Summary: Saix's life is going nowhere. He works a dead end job day in and day out driving trucks and making deliveries until one day something invisible and weightless seems to sit on his sanity and makes him break. And who else but Xemnas is left to clean up his mess? A silly little one-shot.


Every day the same thing. Sweaty hands clutching the ripped leather steering wheel, the sound of some radio station fading in and out as he drove through different cities without so much as blinking at the dramatic, yet subtle changes in scenery. In the background his smart phone gurgled out the words of an audio book he had stopped paying attention to five chapters ago. The radio and audio book were nothing but white noise to him now. It all didn't matter. It wouldn't help him with the restlessness growing like a baby in his stomach, kicking and crying with invisible limbs that made him burn with unease. Two weeks on the road had turned his legs to jelly and his mind to nothing more then overcooked corn meal that had congealed together in his skull.

Being a truck driver was tedious, soul crushing work. He had taken it up at first to pay for the not-so-small fortunes worth of student loans he built up going to The Dalmascan School of the Arts where he obtained a degree in music theory and enough debt to make even Rufus ShinRa look twice. DSA was prestigious with the fees to prove it. And for all it's renown and glory his degree from DSA helped Saix not a bit. No one wanted to higher a boy straight out of school, studied in _music theory_, when there were plenty of other people better trained, and with better experience. Not to mention their face wasn't marred with intimidating looking scars.

Hence, when the opportunity to work as a truck driver, and earn more then five cents an hour standing in front of Choco-Mart greeting people, he dove at the chance with all the zeal of a warrior heading off to battle. He rushed to get his truck-driving license, diving through one bureaucratic hoop after another until he landed the job that would put an end to the horde of collection calls swamping every phone he owned. Five years later and he was still stuck behind the wheel of a smelly, sweat-drenched monster of a vehicle, carting around electronics to the demanding undeserving masses.

And that's how Saix found himself stranded in a toll line amongst a sea of cars for the _only_ tunnel into Midgar; his sleepless days bleeding together until they caked to one another to become one massive hellish day. He was hopelessly stuck and incredibly frustrated. He was an _artist_ goddamn it! Not a truck driver! Not to mention he had deadlines to meet and a crocthy old man of a boss to call. Ansem 'the wise' and 'all powerful' boss of Leviathan Trucking had promised a swift and painful termination of his job if he delivered one more shipment late; never mind that the deadlines were down right inhuman. For example no one on Gaia would ever be able to make it from Balamb to Nibelheim in one week. It was a month trip at the best. Not to mention the closer to Nibelheim the worse the roads got. But regardless of how sucky his job was Saix could not afford to lose his it.

The truck driver rolled down the window and received a strong whiff of smoggy air. He coughed, sputtered, and rolled the window back up halfway all while contemplating where his life went wrong. He had a hunch it was sometime between crying as he lay in a gutter moments after his parents had kicked him out once he had graduated college, and when he first agreed to become part of Ansem's flock of 'messenger pigeons' as he liked to call them. Adding senile to the list of Ansem's attributes Saix finally arrived at the tollbooth. It was at that exact moment the trucker realized he didn't fit.

The tollbooth had a metal bar hanging neatly from the top, swinging rather innocently. It was just high enough to let through a moderately sized U-haul truck but not much else. It seemed Saix had managed to box himself into the highway, a way one tunnel in front of him and an endless line of cars behind him.

Without real cause or provocation Saix felt his cheeks become wet with what could only be silent tears. He could hear the drivers behind him honking, urging him to move. Getting the authorities involved at this point would be inevitable. They would have to direct him out of traffic, give him some sort of ticket or penalty, his boss would be called, and he would be fired, back on the street, crying in a gutter like the failure of a man he knew he was. Saix blinked away the wetness in his eyes. He had felt the strands of his life spiraling out of his control for months now. And what could he do about it? It was nearly impossible to make a living off music, no matter how much Saix loved it. He had given up on his dreams years ago. He couldn't switch jobs, there were no jobs to switch to. No one was hiring these days. And those loans wouldn't pay themselves.

The trucker's sadness quickly turned to anger. Anger at his useless years spent in an expensive school. Anger at his useless degree. Anger at himself for stooping so low as to jump at the chance of having a money-paying job when he should have been starving and happy, writing music somewhere debtors couldn't find him.

It was this anger that fueled Saix's hasty decision. With one forceful push on the gas the man sent his vehicle barreling through the tollbooth and into the tunnel. Within seconds the blood-curling screech of metal scraping across cement resounded across what could have possibly been a 20-mile radius. As Saix kept his foot on the pedal he could feel the top of the truck being shaved off. Yet he didn't care. He had a shipment to deliver and it would get there or he would die trying. Or the truck would die. Either way something was dieing.

The sparks flew from the metal grating against the ceiling of the tunnel and it was a miracle a fire didn't start.

Off to the side of the tollbooths sat two cop cars, their owners staring wide–eyed in horror as they watched Saix ram his truck through the tollbooth, with all the grace of a drunken man, straight into the tunnel.

"Did he really just do that?" A man with shocking red hair tried to hinge his jaw back in place to no avail. His mouth hung open wide, catching flies as he stood leaning against his car in awe.

"Think so. Close your mouth, it really unappealing." A girl with electric blue eyes and platinum blonde hair snapped her companion's mouth closed with the back of her hand. "Xemnas, you get this one." She turned toward a man to her left who was currently running his hands through his silver locks in what could only be described as every mounting frustration.

The silver-haired man looked at his other two companions who seemed to be making no indication that this agreement was up for negotiation. With a sigh the man stared down his fellow policemen. "You guys owe me for this."

"Anything you want Xem. We'll call a tow-truck, you take care of Mr. Crazy."

Shaking his head Xemnas trudged his way into the tunnel, wedging his way through the narrow passage to the driver's-side window. The sight that met his eyes wasn't what he was expecting.

A man who couldn't have been a year older then himself was at the wheel, windswept sky blue hair fell down to the drivers shaking shoulders. Xemnas' eyes wandered up to the man's face and realized the truck driver was crying.

"Sir?" Xemnas' voice echoed off the tunnel's walls.

"Is there a problem officer?"

"Sir, are you joking?"

"No officer. Is there a problem?" Xemnas looked into the trucker's eyes and was rendered speechless. The man wasn't joking. In fact he was deafly serious.

"If you'll excuse me officer, I have a shipment to complete." The policemen found it a small miracle that the trucker's voice wasn't affecting by his crying fit.

"Please tell me you're joking. Sir. Sir please get your foot off the gas. Sir…"

A deafening, ungodly sound resounded through out the tunnel, echoing off the walls as if it were some sort of deranged concert as Saix tried desperately to get his car to move.

"I see you weren't so good with the shapes game when you were little. No matter what you do you won't fit. Just get out of the truck and lets free up this tunnel as soon as possible. People are trying to get home."

"I didn't have the shapes game when I was little. My parents didn't buy me toys. They wanted me to have an imagination." The statement was delivered with no hint of joking or general sarcasm and Xemnas internally flinch. "I pretended to fly a lot, wanted to be a bird."

And if that sentence wasn't the cherry on top of the sad, depressing cake of this guy's life, he didn't want to know what was.

"Did you believe that you could touch the sky at least?"

At that the trucker smiled, his tear dried up, his fingers released there death-like grip from the steering wheel and his lips curled into a hear-felt grin.

"I dreamt about it every night and day."

"That you could spread your wings and fly away?"

"Something like that." Saix chuckled. Xemnas thought it was an amusing sound, much like the noise a toilet makes when it's too full of feces and can't flush.

"You know you're going to jail, right? Midgar-Twilight transit rules." Xemnas cocked his head to the side as he spoke and didn't fall to notice the way Saix's eyes lingered on the exposed flesh of his neck.

"I figured as much…" Saix's eyebrows dropped low over his eyes as his irises began to cloud over with water. His mouth curled into a pout that reminded Xemnas much of a kicked puppy.

The policeman sighed. He'd seen malicious people before; people who hated life, hated people, and just wanted to see others in pain for the sick perverse joy they get in watching others suffer. This man was not one of them. He was someone down on his luck and guilty of nothing but an emotional brake down. "I'll let you go…" Xemnas held his breath in silent prayer that he would not regret this later. "Just promise me you won't ever do something like this ever again."

Saix nodded.

"Go." Xemnas nodded his head down the tunnel, which Saix took as a cue to step on the gas and restart the concerto of horrible screeching noises.

"The truck stays." Saix pout once more, but otherwise left the truck.

"Go! Before I change my mind." Saix nodded, looked down the tunnel, back at Xemnas, reached out to with shaking arms to awkwardly give the policemen a pat on his shoulder, and then took off down the dimly lit corridor.

Xemnas walked back to his fellow cops, feigning a face of dejection and trying to hide the light dusting of red covering his cheeks. "There was no one in the car. I think they ran." The silver-haired man shrugged.

"You let him go, didn't you." Axel didn't bother to hold back his annoyance or amusement.

"Shut up."

-o-

Five years later Xemnas found himself on 79th street without much fuss or fanfare. He was in full uniform, never having bothered to change out of it before he head home from his precinct. He was at the doorstep of his apartment complex when he heard a screech that could rival all the sounds of hell. He looked up and towards the street to find a truck missing it's roof, the sides dented and the loose pieces of metal dragging on the floor, creating sparks as it went; making a parade of danger as it went. When Xemnas looked into the driver's side window he was annoyed, shocked, and excited to see the blue-haired man from five years ago, still up to his ridicules antics. Readying himself for some sort of chase (in which he knew he would probably lose) and he cursed the names of his Gods.

"Stop! In the name of Twilight Town Law I order you to stop!" Xemnas ran out into the street as he yelled this, placing his hand in the air in some sort of feeble attempt to get the truck to stop.

"You?!" Saix's vehicle came to an agonizingly loud halt. There was an awkward silence that ensued where the two stared at one another, occasionally daring to blink. "I'm going to jail, aren't I."

"What do you think?"

With a smirk he couldn't help, Saix responded: "I think I can fly."

Xemnas sighed. He waved his hands down the road to pretend he wasn't going to cut corners around the law yet again."Get the hell out of here."


End file.
